Your 2026 pension reform promise

Pension reform is landing in four major markets at once, from Australia's payday superannuation rules to the Netherlands' shift to individual accounts. Every deadline asks the same thing: can a fund show, accurately and at any moment, what each member is owed? The funds thriving are treating real-time reporting, private assets, and decumulation as one data foundation.

Keeping your pension promise amid 2026's pension reforms

At its core, a pension promise is a promise about data. To honor it, a fund needs an accurate, real-time view of what it owes and what it holds. That must hold no matter how many reforms, mergers, or account changes happen between today and the day a member retires. In 2026, regulators in every major pension market are asking every fund to show that promise holds up.

The opportunity behind that request is bigger than the deadlines attached to it. Global pension assets reached a record USD 68.3 trillion in 2025, rising 9.6 percent year-on-year, according to the WTW Thinking Ahead Institute.¹ More members are relying on the pension promise than ever before, and the funds that modernize their infrastructure now are the ones best placed to serve those members well for decades to come.

Four regional pension reforms, each already law or deadline-bound in a major market, are really the same data challenge, wearing different regulatory clothes. Each points to the same opportunity: a real-time, connected view of obligations, assets, and exposures across the ecosystem. That view only pays off once it lets a fund act faster, gives members accurate figures on demand, and avoids rebuilding the same infrastructure at the next reform cycle. What follows are five moves, grounded in global examples, that put it in place.

Four regional pension reforms, are really the same data challenge, wearing different regulatory clothes. Each points to the same opportunity: a real-time, connected view of obligations, assets, and exposures across the ecosystem.

— Tim Luyet, GTM Senior Principal, SimCorp

1. Give every member an accurate figure the moment they ask

Members increasingly expect their pension provider to know, at any moment, exactly what they are owed. Few legacy systems were built for that kind of immediacy, and three of the world's largest markets are now closing the gap between what a system can report and what a member actually needs to see.

Australia shows what that gap costs when it stays open. Under the old quarterly cycle, a fund could go three months without confirming that a member's contribution had actually arrived, and the Australian Taxation Office estimates that more than AUD six billion in superannuation went unpaid or underpaid in the last financial year as a result.² From July 1, 2026, Australian superannuation contributions must reach a member's fund within seven business days of payday.³ The new rule does more than speed up payment. It requires funds to track and confirm each contribution as it happens, rather than reconciling it weeks or months later.

The United Kingdom is closing a version of the same gap from the member's side of the relationship. All in-scope pension providers must connect to the pensions dashboards ecosystem by October 31, 2026, a deadline set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).⁴ Once connected, a member can check their position on demand, which means a provider's systems need to hold and maintain an accurate, current position at all times, not only at the point of an annual statement.

The United States is applying the same discipline to contributions themselves. SECURE 2.0 provisions effective January 1, 2026, require high earners, those with prior-year wages above USD 150,000, to make catch-up contributions on a Roth, after-tax basis rather than pre-tax.⁵ Applying this pension law correctly means a plan provider must know a member's income tier and contribution type at the moment each contribution is made, not reconcile it at year end

But these deadlines are just a starting point. Funds that build toward a genuinely continuous view of member positions, rather than a faster version of the old periodic report, will have the same accurate answer to “what am I owed” at any moment a member, or a regulator, asks for it.

2. Lift performance, don’t just meet the deadline

Regulatory reform rarely replaces old structures overnight. Funds typically carry investment data across multiple systems through the transition: public and private market positions, portfolio accounting records, and reporting that was never designed to sit on one platform. Funds that get ahead on consolidating their investment data foundation gain something the rest of the industry is still chasing: one connected view of obligations, assets, and exposures, in place before the broader transition even finishes playing out.

The Netherlands is running the largest test of this kind in pension history. The Future Pensions Act, known in the Netherlands as, Wet toekomst pensioenen (WTP) is shifting virtually all accrued benefits, approximately EUR 1.5 trillion in collective pension pots, from defined benefit to individual defined contribution accounts. As of January 1, 2026, about 9.5 million workers have already moved to the new system, with all funds required to complete the transition by January 1, 2028.⁶

The Future Pensions Act is often viewed as a regulatory program, but in practice it is an operating model transformation. Pension funds are reassessing how investment operations, governance, data and technology fit together in a more dynamic environment.

— Arnoud Albada, Partner, asqin

The operational demands are significant. Funds must transition accrued benefits into new structures while simultaneously running live portfolios and maintaining liability tracking across age cohorts. The underlying investment portfolios do not change because of the act, but the operational weight does. It falls on administration, governance, and systems, exactly the layer that has to hold a single, member-level view together while the transition is underway.

The organizations that are most successful are treating WTP as an opportunity to simplify processes and strengthen their operating model, rather than implementing the minimum required regulatory change.

— Erwin Tak, Partner, asqin

The SaaS move delivered a tenfold performance increase in some key SimCorp modules, like the Asset Manager module. And that really boosted involvement of front office staff.

— Sander Tegelaar, Director IT, PGGM Investments⁷

The United Kingdom faces the same underlying demand from the supply side of the market. From 2030, multi-employer defined contribution master trusts and group personal pension providers must maintain a main default arrangement of at least GBP 25 billion in assets under management or show a credible path from GBP 10 billion to that scale by 2035.⁸ That threshold will drive a wave of mergers among providers whose systems, member records, and reporting were never built to sit on one platform.

3. Prepare reporting for the shift toward private assets

Regulators in multiple markets are encouraging pension funds to consider private assets, and the reporting and valuation infrastructure in many legacy systems was not built with that asset class in mind. Getting ahead of this now means funds can seize the opportunity as it grows, without losing the member-level visibility the pension promise depends on.

United States corporate defined benefit plans closed 2025 with an aggregate funded ratio of about 107 to 108 percent, the strongest position in decades, giving sponsors more room to consider new asset classes and governance models.⁹ The United Kingdom's FCA has said it wants firms to feel confident pursuing private-asset opportunities where there is potential for better long-term returns and diversification. Its forthcoming Value for Money framework, with a first assessment due in 2028, will call for consistent, auditable reporting on cost and performance.¹⁰ In Australia, the two largest superannuation funds, AustralianSuper (AUD 410 billion) and Australian Retirement Trust (AUD 370 billion), are building direct investment capability at scale, adding public markets, private assets, and directly held positions to their reporting all at once.¹¹

Pension reform is accelerating a shift from managing asset classes in isolation to managing the portfolio as a whole, with each investment judged by its contribution to total risk, return, liquidity, cash flow, and long-term benefit obligations. This total portfolio view depends on trusted, connected data across public and private markets. Clear ownership, common definitions, and traceable data are what let analytics and AI deliver sustained value. That need looks different depending on where you sit: US public pension funds modernizing their investment systems and data infrastructure; UK regulators urging trustees to strengthen data quality and clean records ahead of Pension Schemes Act consolidation; and Australian funds needing a trusted data foundation to support superannuation assets growing toward $12.4 trillion by 2045.

— Lejla Agic, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Firms are building that reporting capability now, positioning to act on private-asset opportunities as they emerge instead of reporting on them after the fact. A member's figure has to stay accurate whatever sits behind it.

4. Get ready to help retirees turn savings into income

Most pension reforms over the past few decades have focused on the saving phase: contribution rates, tax treatment, encouraging people to save more. The newer, and now faster-moving part of the story is what happens the moment the pension is actually cashed in.

Sixty percent of leading defined contribution organizations already name retirement income adequacy as the sector's biggest challenge for the next decade.¹² In the United Kingdom, a guided retirement duty for defined contribution schemes is being phased in from 2027 to 2028, asking master trusts to offer structured decumulation support.⁸ In the Netherlands, the shift to individual defined contribution accounts means decumulation support now needs to be built in place of the automatic longevity-risk pooling a collective system once provided.

Funds that start building this capability now, ahead of the 2027 to 2028 deadlines, will meet the moment on their own terms rather than under deadline pressure, with an accurate, real-time view of decumulating members' positions in place, rather than one assembled at the last minute.

5. Build connectivity for a total portfolio

Most investment management teams still build integrations with custodians, external managers, and dashboards one at a time, and those connections are typically static, built for the counterparties in place when they were made rather than designed to evolve as the ecosystem changes. That approach was manageable when reform arrived once a decade. It is harder to sustain when Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States are each rewriting a piece of the infrastructure in the same 18 months. Funds that design their connectivity to be extended rather than rebuilt flip that equation: they can onboard new counterparties and data sources as the ecosystem shifts, instead of launching a fresh integration project every time it does.

That same connectivity is what makes a genuine total portfolio view possible: public and private holdings, internally and externally managed assets, seen on one basis rather than reconciled from separate systems after the fact. It also frees an operations team from stitching together custodian data by hand, checking prices line by line, and rebuilding a start-of-day position manually. So, the people closest to a fund's obligations spend their time making judgment calls rather than chasing reconciliations.

This is the discipline known across the industry as the total portfolio approach: an evolution of strategic asset allocation that brings every asset class, public and private into one connected framework rather than a series of separate books running against separate benchmarks.¹³ Adoption tracks operational maturity, and institutions with an established, real-time Investment Book of Record (IBOR) move fastest, while those still consolidating positions from a data warehouse at day's end are left with what amounts to a total portfolio glance rather than a live view they can act on. For funds also expanding into private markets under the reporting shift above, that same real-time foundation is what makes daily cash flow forecasting for illiquid holdings possible, in place of the annual forecasting cycle most limited partners still rely on.¹⁴

For a UK master trust preparing to merge into a larger scheme, or a Dutch fund still reconciling legacy defined benefit records against new individual accounts, this is the difference between a merger that preserves a real-time, unified view of the combined fund’s positions and one that spends a year reconciling two sets of books before the combined fund can report a reliable position.

Connectivity built as core infrastructure, rather than a series of one-off integration projects, is what lets a fund absorb the next reform or counterparty change instead of rebuilding for it.

The same pattern, worldwide

These pressures reach well beyond the four markets above. In South Korea, contributions are rising gradually from nine to 13 percent starting in 2026, the first increase since 1998, as the country's population aged 65 and over is projected to grow from 20.3 percent in 2025 to 48.6 percent by 2070.^15,16 Chile introduced a new social insurance pension layer effective January 1, 2026, including a women's pension supplement that recognizes longer average life expectancy.¹⁶ Norway raised its mandatory public-sector retirement age from 70 to 72, effective January 1, 2026.¹⁷ Ireland launched a nationwide auto-enrollment pension scheme on January 1, 2026, bringing workplace pension coverage to more than 760,000 workers who previously had none,¹⁸ and Japan is loosening contribution flexibility rules for corporate defined contribution plans starting in April 2026.¹⁹

A contribution-rate increase, a retirement-age change, and a new enrolment mandate are separate reforms with separate objectives. Each one still adds members, extends timelines, or changes what a system has promised to pay, and each of those changes eventually meets the constraint the four markets above are already working through: whether the system can pay faster, connect its data, support new asset classes, and give members a real-time view as they move into decumulation.

The infrastructure decision on your desk

Every fund above is answering the same underlying question on a different timeline: can you see obligations, assets, and exposures as one connected picture, across whatever mix of legacy and new structures your fund runs today?

The reform deadlines above are just one milestone in your region. Building past them, toward a real-time, connected view across public and private markets, internally and externally managed assets, and legacy and new structures alike, means you will not be revisiting this decision at the next reform cycle.

The pension promise is settled the day a member retires. The data behind it is settled long before that, and it is what lets a member see an accurate figure every year they wait. For the members counting on you, this is a good year to build it.

References

¹ Global pension assets rise by nearly 10%, reaching new high, WTW Thinking Ahead Institute, 2026.

² Payday Super Readiness, APRA, 2026 (citing ATO estimate of over AUD 6 billion in unpaid superannuation).

³ Payday Super: New rules starting 1 July 2026, Fair Work Ombudsman, 2026.

⁴ Pensions dashboards: how to connect to the ecosystem, FCA, 2026.

⁵ Catch-Up Contributions 2025 and 2026: A Guide, Charles Schwab, 2025.

⁶ Netherlands: Transition to a New Pension System, L&E Global, 2026.

⁷ How PGGM delivered pension reform, SimCorp, 2026.

⁸ Pension Schemes Act 2026: A guide to the key provisions, Norton Rose Fulbright, 2026.

⁹ Corporate pensions enter 'surplus era' as funding tops 108%, InvestmentNews, 2026; US Corporate Pension Review and Preview, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, 2026.

¹⁰ FCA Regulatory Priorities report 2026: Pensions, Global Regulation Tomorrow, 2026.

¹¹ How did Australia's two largest super funds perform?, Money Management, 2026.

¹² DC adequacy is 'number one challenge for the decade ahead' around the world, Pensions Expert, citing the Thinking Ahead Institute's DC study, 2025.

¹³ The Total Portfolio Approach momentum, SimCorp, 2026.

¹⁴ Reducing the inherent risk of private capital, SimCorp, 2024.

¹⁵ South Korea to increase National Pension Service contribution rates, Lockton, 2025; Assembly passes bill for first hike in pension payments in 28 years, The Korea Herald, 2025.

¹⁶ International Update, April 2025, US Social Security Administration, 2025.

¹⁷ More people will be able to work until the age of 72, Statens pensjonskasse, 2025.

¹⁸ Auto-enrolment launches in Ireland, IPE, 2026.

¹⁹ Japan DC Pension Reform & Contribution Changes, HUB International, 2026.